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The Government also applied pressure to the unions from another quarter. Shortly after the strike vote, Johnson and other officers of N.A.L.C. Branch 36 were ordered to appear in court to show cause why they should not be held in contempt of the antistrike injunction. The Government is asking that the officials be fined $1,000 each for the first day of the strike, $2,000 for the second and progressively increasing amounts for subsequent days. It is also asking that the union be penalized on a similar scale, its fine starting at $10,000.
While raising many practical and legal questions, the postal strike also underscores the helplessness of government in the face of organized, even if nonviolent, lawlessness. It also points up the growing tendency on the part of individuals and special interests to press their demands despite the havoc wrought on the community, and demonstrates the deterioration of discipline that has become a major challenge to U.S. society in recent years. In spite of state and local laws forbidding such actions, strikes by public employees have spread like an epidemic throughout the nation. The Government's effectiveness—or lack of it—in halting the postal walkout could thus determine whether other federal employees decide that the way to a pay raise is through the picket lines.
The dilemma is a complex one. While postal workers—and many other public employees—are undeniably underpaid, government's first obligation is to protect the economy and maintain essential public services. The right to strike is an important weapon in labor's arsenal. But strikes against government—whether local, state or federal—not only endanger society but also weaken popular confidence in government and ultimately degrade the government itself.
Unfortunately, nothing has been devised so far to prevent them. New York's tough Taylor Law, which provides heavy fines and jail terms for striking public employees, failed to prevent New York City's garbage collectors or schoolteachers from walking off their jobs. Ohio's law calling for the dismissal of every public employee who goes on strike has proved equally ineffective. Ohio had more than two dozen strikes—involving police, nurses, city service employees and teachers—in a recent one-year period.
Federal law is equally strict, and equally unenforceable. Chapter 73 of the Federal Code prohibits federal employees from even advocating the right to strike, but the antistrike laws are rarely invoked. "You can't jail thousands of workers," said a Post Office spokesman of last week's walkout. Indeed, most strike settlements contain provisions prohibiting the punishment of strikers. Nor, without stiffening worker resistance or running the risk of triggering a sympathy strike, can officials jail strike leaders.